F1 Driver Mistakes

Bienvenue au Québec


Every year it gets someone.

 

Sato, every time he gets in the car.

 

Drivers' mistakes? saw plenty of them. Three come to mind right now.

_ Mansell, I think it was in Canada, but not too sure now. He is leading the GP, only one lap to go to the chequered flag, Nigel with a comfortable lead, slows down and starts waving to the crowd, already celebrating. Suddenly the engine cuts and the car stops. Everyone see Nigel agitated and looking at the dash-board while the rest of the cars pass by. The commentators announce that the William has run out of fuel during the last lap. Nigel knows better; with all his frantic gestures, he did hit the kill-switch on the steering wheel! Another GP lost

_Prost at Imola on a ... Ferrari. During the warning up lap for the San Marino GP, the field swerves from side to side as they do to warm up the tires on the way to the starting grid. It's raining heavily. Prost hits the painted kerb, the car starts spinning, he corrects but find himself with 4 wheels on the grass. He tries braking, the tires have no grip on the wet grass and he slowly slides 60 yards down the embarquement all wheels locked until the nosecone of the Ferrari hits (at low speed) the guardrail. The engine has stalled. End of the GP! Apparently the Ferrari team was not amused!

_Guerrero at Indianapolis. During the long qualification process at Indy, Guerrero having done his best time during the first weekend takes the pole. At the start of the race, he leads the field behind the pace car during the warming lap. As usual, everyone tries to warm the tires by short bursts of acceleration followed by braking, and also 'snaking' (turning side to side).
As he comes out of turn 4, still at low speed, Guerrero 'boots it', the car turns sideways, goes over the grass and hits the inside wall before the pits head on. The race hasn't started yet, but already a yellow period. The pace car carries on containing the field, whist Guerrero, unhurt, gets out of his car and walks to his pits; the race is over for him.

 

The best was Coulthard leading in the Williams at the Australian GP in 1995 and crashing into the pit wall entrance...I am sure Frank and Patrick were not to amused, wonder what Ron Dennis was thinking.

 

Great memorable moments were last year Alonso in Canada and this year MS in Melbourne. Also JPM plowing into Kimi at Indy and Speed plowing into Ralf etc in Silverstone come to mind. Brain fades.

 

Ide.

 

Takuma Sato = Every Race = Hits everything but the safety car. Should stick to Bike riding. Teams keep him around cause he is the direct heir to Panasonic.

 

Webber moving to Red Bull for 2007

 

He has not hit anything this season, he was British F3 Champion. The person who is heir to the Panasonic family lives here in California and owns Swift Racing Cars, his name is Hiro Matsu****aa. Unfortunately, it is not allowing me to spell it properly since it has S H I T in the middle.

 

Mansell in Detroit - not sure of the year, but I was there every year, it happened in front of me as I was taking pics - and the FCNA was above me having a grand ol party, anyway:

In practice, Mansell was flying thru Ford Tunnel, approaching 16-17 (16 is the right-hander, then a quick lefthander (17) to the straight: anyway, in practice Mansell was flying, then in a practice later in the day he was flying, but cut it a bit too close in 16 and hit the tire barrier.

Asked what happened, he said 'I missed my breaking point'

What really happened was, his 'breaking point' was a large white soft drink cup a corner marshall had sitting on the wall, and later in the day the marshall moved about 30' further towards the corner - and moved his cup 30' as well....

 

MS's mocaco incident in 2004? crashing behind the safety car. with JPM.

 

We may have to discuss this one offline with a cigar and whiskey as this can get heated lol. I know the Sato family. He also started with Formula Dream here in Japan. There is more then meets the eye with this one. I did not say the family, I said the company. Hiro is a great guy dont get me wrong, but there is alot of feeling that Sato will take it for political reasons. I dont think Hiro will leave Newport Beach for Japan anyway. lol. Also remember, Hiro is Matsu****a Denki. Sato in Panasonic. The keiretsu is the same but still different families. His cousin is a Mason and we were discussing this in lodge. He has not hit anything this season cause I think he is driving at his potential. When he tries to hang with the top guys he goes off on a tangent. Alot of people laugh at him here in Japan, some love him, I personally dont care cause he does not affect my wealth or lifestyle. I do think he is a crappy driver though. Sorry, I hate the Japanese system for the way they produce drivers. If you are interested in how they do it, by all means ask me and I will tell you. I can say, it is all about money. I see drivers here who would run takuma/hiro to the ground....fast but to get track time you are spending 300$ for 30-45 min at Suzuka. the other tracks are about the same price and no one importaint ever goes to the cheap tracks. //end rant.

 

Senna leading the Monaco GP by nearly half a lap experiences brain-fade and can-opens his car on the armco at the tunnel entrance.

Nobody's prefekt.

 

The Whiskey and Cigar sound good, perhaps Ron can bring some Grey Goose as well.

 

Exactly, and that is because Ron Dennis was telling him to slow down as he had such a lead. Senna said after that incident it changed him, we never saw him make such a boneheaded mistake, except for crashing out Prost in 90.

 

My personal "favorite".

 

Brazil 1990-Senna walked away from the entire field and ran into Nakijima while lapping him; total ****-up on Senna's part; if Senna had won that race he wouldn't have had to take out Prost in Japan later that year.....

As William stated above, Prost spinning in the warm-up lap @ San Marino and Mansell's Canadian GP mistake which the Speed commentators still talk about today.

World Champions are human and do make mistakes like the rest of us....

 

Are you talking about the time he accidentally hit the car's ignition (or fuel?) shut-off while waving to the crowd on the last lap? Priceless

 

Lol, good list but he has been around for longer than most others drivers. The longer you're around the more mistakes you make. And you forgot Hungary 06. Throwing all those points away when all he had to do was finish 4th and collect the points

 

Yep. A classic....

 

That is a good one. Piquet, who won that race said he was so excited when he got the call to "push push Mansell is stopping" that he almost had an orgasam